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Chapter 2: No Sin, No Virtue

The buddha has to say the unsayable, he has to express the inexpressible, he has to define the indefinable. He has to do this absurd act, because the moment he reaches beyond the mind great compassion arises. He can see people stumbling in the dark, he can see people suffering unnecessarily - creating their own nightmares, creating their own hell and drowning in their own created hells. How can he avoid feeling compassion?

And the moment compassion arises he wants to communicate to them that this is your own doing, that you can get out of it; that there is a way out of it, that there is a state beyond it; that life is not what you think it is. Your thinking about life is just like the thinking of a blind man about light. The blind man can go on thinking about light, but he will never be able to come to a true conclusion. His conclusions may be very logical, but still they will miss the experience. Light is an experience; you don t need logic for it - what you need is eyes.

Buddha has eyes. And eyes are attained only when you have gone beyond the mind, when you have become a witness to the mind, when you have attained to a higher state than psychology. Then you know that you are not your thoughts, not your body, you know that you are only knowing - the energy that reflects, the energy that is capable of seeing - that you are pure seeing.

Once Buddha was asked, “Who are you?” He was such a beautiful man and buddhahood had conferred such grace on him, that many times he was asked, “Who are you?” He looked like an emperor or a god who had come from heaven, and he lived like a beggar. Again and again he was asked, “Who are you?” And the man who was asking was a great scholar. He said, “Are you from the world of gods? Are you a god?”

Buddha said, “No.”

“Then are you a gandharva?”

Gandharvas are the musicians of the gods. Buddha had such music around him - the music of silence, the sound of no sound, of one hand clapping - that it was natural to ask him, “Are you a gandharva, a celestial musician?”

Buddha said, “No.”

And the man went on asking. There are many categories in Hindu mythology from gods to man. Then finally he asked, “Are you a great king, a chakravartin, one who rules over the world?”

And Buddha said, “No.”

Annoyed, the scholar asked, “Are you a man, or not even that?”

Buddha said. “Don’t be annoyed, but what can I do? I have to state the truth as it is. I am not a man either.”

Now the scholar was too angry, enraged. He said, “Then are you an animal?”

Buddha said, “No, not an animal, not a tree, not a rock.”

“Then who are you?” the man asked.

Buddha said, “I am awareness, just pure awareness, just a mirror reflecting all that is.”